Kimberlee K.

It was silent.

My sister bounced her baby girl, hoping she’d fall asleep, my brother-in-law waded in the shallow water, I floated on my stomach, kicking my feet quietly, and my mom held the six foot net, waiting.

It was our last day at the lake and the weekend spent with friends had been filled with watching the Olympics, stargazing on the back porch, floating, swimming, sleeping, and sitting on the dock eating sandwiches. We’d discovered a shallow path that cut across the cove, allowing us to walk from one side of the lake to the other; we’d done laps on the paddleboards, keeping our eyes out for deer, bald eagles, and what we believed was a bobcat; we’d formed circle after circle around the eight-month-old we affectionately call “the queen,” watching her soak in the sunny day, splash in the lake water, and squint up at the sky.

My dad had brought his fishing pole, hopeful to catch pretty much anything, and we made jokes about which of our snacks might serve as better bait than the tackle he’d meticulously rigged up.

“What about a minnow?”

As we floated, a school of minnow would occasionally bubble the water as they shifted formation. Standing on the dock looking down, you could see them by the hundreds.

“They are coming right for you!” we’d say to someone swimming, and they’d kick and paddle, hopeful the school would change direction.

After a day of talking about them, of wishing we had a bucket, of thinking about that scene in Finding Nemo where the school of fish encouragingly chant, “keep swimming,” we decided that we needed to catch some.

They were tiny, energetic, the perfect bait for a bigger fish that, if I’m honest, I didn’t like imagining was swimming somewhere beneath me. Even so, we collectively adopted it as our task for the day. Our challenge. Because what a blissful thing to have nowhere else you need to be, nothing else you need to do. As we ate our ice box sandwiches—which always taste better than anything else—we watched my dad and his lifelong friend Rob stalk up and down the dock looking down at the water.

“There,” one would say, pointing at the bubbles, and the other, wielding the net, would move accordingly.

“There.”

“Now there.”

But each time the net came up empty.

“Let me try,” my mom said when most of us were all back in the water.

She was in a float chair, donning a sun hat, her posture soft, her brow determined.

We had all joined in on the pointing, to the ever-present announcement of they’re right there, and she was ready to try her hand at minnow catching.

And maybe it was because we were in a private cove off the lake with no one else watching us, maybe it was because our day was open and our concept of time had melted like the pack of gummy worms I’d mistakenly left in the sun, maybe it was just because we’d known each other forever and had the same senses of humor, but we all diligently signed up for this minnow hunt, and then promptly fell into collective silence, as if they could hear us, sense that our attitude towards them had turned predatory.  

We fell into an unspoken formation in the water, at times trying to corral the school of minnows towards the shallower water where my mom sat ready, waiting.

“They are truly right behind you,” my sister said from the boat, determinedly bouncing my niece, whose eyes stayed open, as if she could sense the group activity she would miss out on if she fell asleep.

“I know,” my mom whispered.

But somehow, the net always came up empty.

In lulls, I’d spin in a circle in the water, leaning my head back to wet my hair. Birds cooed and cawed from somewhere up in the trees, but the eagle remained elusive, as did the bobcat.

I don’t know how long we tried to catch them, how many times my mom stabbed the net into the water, how many times we pointed at the minnows and then, moments later, turned in a circle, wondering where they went.

But eventually my mom passed the net off and went back to floating—we all did.

“Can you pass me a cookie?” someone said.

And so the day went on.